Critical
by ThatZero
Summary: They're partners. The best of the best. They're a rumor, a myth, a mysterious duo. The Hawk and the Widow. They've always been close through the thick and the thin. But there's an unspoken truth between the two, and even in the midst of tragedy Clint can't bring himself to say it.


Rumors ran amuck at S.H.I.E.L.D., talk of the two top agents and whatever was between. Fellow Avengers would never dare speak on it, but they all had their own suspicions. It seemed like everyone did in the end. To the subjects, it was a dangerous game, a dance in the dark with high tension and nervous spirits. To outside eyes it was so easy to see, so obvious that the sight was painful.

To the Widow and the Hawk, it was a partnership.

* * *

Clint Barton understood Natasha Romanoff unlike anyone else he had ever met.

Natasha was different. She was special, in her own way. She was a dangerous woman with dangerous morals, unknown to so many people as she slipped from different identities. But to him she was Natasha, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and a damn good one. She was his partner, a woman who had pulled his ass out of the fire too many times to count. She was trustworthy and she had proven that over and over, both during the heat of a firefight and during the brief peaceful lapses of quiet jobs.

She was a friend.

But despite how close Clint liked to think they were, he knew there were unseen walls where he walked. He knew that little things could set her off, that small noises in the quiet could send her on edge. Other agents would sometimes comment, stating that "Romanoff isn't afraid of anything". Clint knew better. He knew that Natasha was always afraid of something. In a way, she was never without fear.  
It was that she managed to keep her composure, to keep that mask firmly in place.

He had seen her without it only a scant few times.

The most memorable was when he woke from a living dream.

* * *

Natasha Romanoff tried to dismiss it.

She knew Clint, she understood his drives and his motives and even his obsession with fried food. He told her about his past, little bits and pieces along the line until she stitched them all together. But she didn't tell him anything about her, and Natasha liked to think they were both fine with that. She knew that Clint understood her concerns in letting all of those memories be passed on to a different person, even to him. And she knew how much those little tokens would have meant if shared.

But Natasha couldn't bring herself to it.

She considered them close. The closest partners S.H.I.E.L.D. had to offer, in fact. They were the best in the business, the go-to team for the toughest missions. As far as she was concerned they had been through hell and back together, but that was what partners were for. They were there for each other, they listened, and they kept one another safe. That was her understanding of the term. But with Clint, it was different from the standard pair-up of agents.

It was different, because when he was compromised, so was she.

* * *

They didn't talk about the days the world as they knew it almost ended.  
It was a courtesy thing.

Clint had difficulty coping with the knowledge that he had downed other agents.  
Natasha had difficulty accepting her fears.

In the end, it worked out. But they always did.

There was the shock of the world being saved, the following press, the allowed break from work for a job well done. It wouldn't last and they both knew it, but it was nice. There was Coulson's funeral, but they didn't talk about that and never would. After the boom of publicity and the lack of another threat it would be back to work as normal. Clint had voiced that it wasn't so bad, being a real-life superhero. Natasha had stated firmly that it wouldn't last, so he shouldn't get his hopes up.

And of course, Natasha was right.

Three months after the world was saved, they were pulled back into the old routine.

Natasha had a job in Paris. It was a simple infiltration of a weapons boss; nothing to be worried over. It was a two week gig with a new undercover identity. Natasha had a thing for deadlines, and she returned within the week with even more information than she was originally going for.

Clint's job was longer, a bit more complicated. He needed to stake out a specific route in Germany, keeping an eye out on a caravan that was transporting supposed nuclear weapons intelligence from one secret underground base to the next. It was a three week trip, consisting of little sleep and a sharp eye with his fingers itching to draw his bow string. He spent half of his time wondering if the caravan was ever going to show up, and the other half trying to reason why S.H.I.E.L.D. was so willing to take him back after his incident with Loki.

Natasha told him it wasn't his fault and that S.H.I.E.L.D. trusted him, that they wouldn't throw him away after one event that he had no control over. She told him to stop worrying about it, to not do that to himself, and to take the damn job. Clint couldn't argue with her; no one could argue with the Black Widow. And even so, he still pondered over why Fury had been so ready to send him a mission.

He got his answer in an unfavorable way.

* * *

The night air was cold, crisp. It kept him awake, kept his senses sharp.

Clint could respect a chilling breeze. He could respect the silence that came between the excitement on a job. Most of what he did was boring and dull. A lot of waiting around patiently, occupying himself in whatever ways he could, staying awake hours on end so he could watch a target. The action came in small bursts here and there. The waiting took up most of his time, but he didn't mind it.  
The waiting was better than the sudden rush of motion, in a few ways.

When his communicator chirped with static, the basis for an incoming call, Clint paused. He had watched the road, stationed carefully behind an outcrop of rock in the middle of no where, hunkered down out of sight and waiting. There was supposed to be radio silence on this mission, and a call usually meant that the trail was dead or that the plan had changed.

"Barton," he hushed after bringing a hand to his face.  
The voice on the other line surprised him.

"This is Hill," she said firmly, all-business as usual. Clint failed to keep the furrow from his brow. "There's an emergency pickup for you heading in. They're two miles out, north on northwest."

Clint paused, listening to Maria and looking up at her intended direction. As far as he knew there was no need for an emergency pickup. Those had to be called in by the agents or authorized by Fury when everything went to hell. From glancing around, he didn't see anything that would cause him to be airlifted out. He hadn't even seen so much as a deer in the past two days.

"This is some kind of joke, right? You're checking to see if I'm still awake. Hill, that's nice and all, but I've got work to-" Clint started with a light laugh, stretching his lips into a mild grin and keeping his eyes sharp from his position.

"Barton."  
He faltered, recognizing the obviously serious tone from the senior agent.  
"Agent Romanoff has been compromised."

* * *

It had been a second job.

Clint had already left by the time Natasha accepted. More difficult than the first, but following up in the same area. As good as she was, Natasha was easily recognizable. Her hair was a dead giveaway, and so were her actions if you looked close enough. Apparently one of the bodyguards for the weapons boss recognized her as the woman who had completely screwed over their plans and crashed their empire. He put a bullet through her and left her to bleed out in the streets.

By some miracle, a passerby found her and called the police and an ambulance. S.H.I.E.L.D. heard about it immediately afterwards and managed to infiltrate and get her back to the Helicarrier. By the time Clint was ushered into the emergency pickup, Natasha was going through surgery. He was told that she lost a large amount of blood, that she was having difficulty breathing, that she was unconscious and hooked up to a machine. He was silent throughout the ride, staring at nothing in particular with a set jaw.

Maria had said she was lucky to be alive, that she was stable and they were going to keep her that way.  
But it didn't ease any of his fears.

The flight in to the Helicarrier lasted three hours.

Clint clamored up out of his seat before the quinjet touched down, staggering onto the pavement once the doors opened. Maria Hill was standing nearby, prim and professional, a folder in her hands. He didn't look at her, didn't pass a greeting. Barton merely stormed right on past the senior agent, marching toward the nearest door into the facilities. Not missing a beat, Hill started off after him. She had to jog to catch up.

"Natasha got out of surgery an hour ago. She's in Critical, still unconscious, and her breathing is being kept stable," Maria reported as they moved. The superior agent noted to herself that Clint had a near frantic look in his eyes. She also noted that he was trying desperately to hide it, but that wasn't fooling anyone. When Barton didn't respond, she fell back and let him be on his way.

It was better to let the Hawk go to the Widow.

He made it there in near record time, dodging around various agents along his way. They expected him in Critical, didn't say anything when he burst through the door into the medical facility, didn't bother trying to stop him. There was no use. Clint would have fought his fellow agents off. And from how they avoided his eyes, from how they kept a distance, they knew.

During his mad dash here, it hadn't occurred to Clint what he was supposed to think or feel. All he knew was that his partner had been critically wounded in the field and there was a chance she could die. In their work, that chance was a probability that they all accepted. It didn't mean they had to like it, and Clint would be damned if he said so. But this was different. Storming down the hall, being pointed along wordlessly. It was very different. This wasn't Coulson, who had died trying to defend Thor and in turn the world. This was Natasha, who trusted so few people, who was so strong and so brave and so frightened all of the time.

He wasn't prepared for what was behind that door.  
But Clint would be damned if he didn't see her now.

* * *

The first thing he noticed was the sound.

Her heartbeat was portrayed by a machine, beeping at a slow rhythm. Slight hisses of oxygen fed into the mask over her face, keeping the tube down her throat intact. Clint briefly realized that Maria had never told him where Natasha had been shot. As he stood in the doorway, clenching and unclenching his fists, he stared at her frail and tiny form in the hospital bed. His gaze lingered on the tubes and the wires, all of this machinery that, together, was keeping his partner alive.

Clint swallowed the lump in his throat and approached her bed.

Natasha was out cold. She was pale and her hair was an absolute stringy mess. Laying there in that bed, her chest moving in small and gentle waves, she looked as defenseless as he had ever seen. The Black Widow, shrunken into a shell of herself, so breakable and easily lost. Clint never dreamed he would see her when she was vulnerable. Standing at the end of her bed, blocking out the noise of her heart and her lungs, he wished he didn't have to.

"Tasha."

It was more for him than it was for her.  
A hushed, breathy word that flew from his lips so swiftly, he hardly knew it was there.

She didn't respond, and Clint mentally scolded himself for expecting her to. For hoping, praying even, that she would sit up from that bed, arch a fine brow at the tubes plugged into her, and turn her gaze to him. It was stupid, so stupid, that he could predict what she would say.

_"What are you staring at, Barton?"_

He forced his muscles into motion, walking around to the side of the bed. There was a chair there, something so out of place in this sterile room that was fear incarnate. But he sat down regardless, leaning forward and nervously wiping his hands on his field pants. Natasha's lungs fluttered, her chest forced to keep up the same repetitive motion that was required for life. Clint found himself unable to look at her, instead staring at the floor as he had on the flight over.

For an hour he sat like that, completely still and quiet, a shadow in this room of machines.

Clint knew the silence wouldn't work for either of them, but it was so hard to speak. Too hard. He cleared his throat a few times, glanced up at her, almost expecting Natasha to be staring back at him with a little expectant frown, like she did when he started to crack a joke when they were waiting around on a mission. She wasn't, and even though he knew he was being foolish, he wished she would make a sudden and miraculous recovery. If only so he could hear her dismiss any ideas he might have of taking care of her, because she was a strong and independent woman who didn't need any help.

Except when she did.

Clint ran his hands through his hair, closing his eyes and leaning back. Natasha always bounced right back into the game. It was how she operated. She healed faster than she should, and even if she wasn't supposed to be up and moving around she would be. Natasha fought hard with injuries, minor or serious. It didn't seem to matter to her. She took risks, big risks, but she always survived. She was never taken out of the field, taken out of the game. Clint knew her well enough to know she wouldn't leave a job unfinished.

He expelled a shaky breath and opened his eyes to watch her.  
The machines beeped to fill her silence.

Finally, he couldn't take it anymore.

"Do you remember when," he started weakly, having to pause to clear his throat. "When we went to Kansas, on that boring as hell mission with the druggies? We had free time before the next move, and I dragged you into that diner. It was years ago, when we just started out as partners. You said that you'd never seen a more disgusting restaurant in your life, but you ate the steak anyway to get me to shut up."

He smiled as he spoke, worrying his hands together and making periodic glances at Natasha's face. Her eyes were closed, her mouth hanging somewhat open under the mask. Clint pulled his eyes away and cleared his throat again. "You poked fun at my taste in food and music, but I didn't care. It was one of the first times I saw you smile. Actually smile, not one of those fake ones you gave to marks," he trailed off dryly.

Natasha didn't respond, didn't defend herself. He wished she would.

It went on like that for hours.

Clint sat there, adjusting himself in his seat, staring at one machine to the next, at her pale hands, at the hint of bandages he saw tucked under her loose tank. He retold old stories, little tales between missions, during missions. He humored himself, even laughing every now and then, only to look at Natasha and expect her lips to curl. They never did, but he imagined it a few times. It helped.

The stories finally weren't enough, and he lapsed into silence.  
After silence came quiet pleas, reassuring words and silent begging.

"You're going to be fine, Tash. But you need to wake up."

She didn't, but it was worth a try.

He slept in that chair overnight, finally out of stories and out of bribes and shaky prayers.

It went on for a week, this little game of theirs. Clint stuck by her side, making up stories when he could and even talking about his past more. He asked her questions about hers, quietly, and he pretended that she answered. He told her his favorite places to go, his favorite things to do. He told her everything, and when he ran out of words he sat in the silence and watched her, hoping she would wake.

Hoping she would sit up and narrow her pretty eyes at him.  
Ask him what the hell he was doing, sitting there watching her sleep.

She didn't.


End file.
